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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuct to Blow Your Mind, production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 1: today we're gonna reach into a jar of pickled eggs

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Speaker 1: and and see what we pull out. Yes, that's right,

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Speaker 1: we are venturing into the egg chamber. Uh. This is

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Speaker 1: gonna be kind of a potpourri episode. Uh, kind of

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Speaker 1: a you know, a salad bar episode with with multiple

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Speaker 1: um curiosities plucked from the vinegar soaked vat here and

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Speaker 1: if everyone digs it, perhaps will come back and explore

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Speaker 1: more topics along this line. But basically, yeah, we're talking

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Speaker 1: about eggs, and eggs just in general are pretty amazing,

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Speaker 1: even in their most mundane form. Factoring you know, into

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Speaker 1: the equation the more familiar examples of reproduction and cuisine,

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Speaker 1: you know, I feel like we need to take a

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Speaker 1: step back and just consider weird and wonderful they are

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Speaker 1: there in the organic vessel a means for biology to

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Speaker 1: leave one being and then develop into another and then

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Speaker 1: burst free of this protective shell or casing that has

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Speaker 1: served as its vehicle. The egg in a way makes

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Speaker 1: me think of that quote that we've talked about a

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Speaker 1: couple of times. That was in Brian Green's book about

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Speaker 1: how when we learned to take the water with us

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Speaker 1: out of the ocean. That's like how organisms move to land,

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Speaker 1: like you know that where water bags slashing around on feet,

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Speaker 1: And in a way, the egg is sort of the

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Speaker 1: same principle. It takes some of the same sustaining conditions

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Speaker 1: from being within the mother's body, outside of the body

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Speaker 1: where you can eventually hatch out after you mature enough.

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Speaker 1: I like that you brought up the ocean here, because

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Speaker 1: we all of course come from the ocean. That is

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Speaker 1: the the ultimate origin of of life here on Earth.

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Speaker 1: But but in addition to that, we see of course

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Speaker 1: primordial oceans factoring into various world mythologies, and we also

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Speaker 1: see uh the idea of an egg featuring prominently in

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Speaker 1: world mythologies as well. We see variations of the world

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Speaker 1: egg in many different myth cycles, including but not limited

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Speaker 1: to Vedic, Greek, Egyptian, and Chinese mythologies. And we could

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Speaker 1: we could easily devote an entire episode just to these

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Speaker 1: varied myths, because they're all pretty pretty fabulous. The idea

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Speaker 1: of of of the universe or some primordial creator being

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Speaker 1: emerging from this egg. Uh. In the Greek tradition, it's

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Speaker 1: known as the and it's often depicted as being kind

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Speaker 1: of serpent bound, this orphic egg from which the primordial

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Speaker 1: fan ease emerges. Isn't it interesting though, the way that

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Speaker 1: the egg is kind of a biological Pandora's box to

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Speaker 1: go to another Greek myth, because you can't always tell

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Speaker 1: from the external morphology of the egg what kind of

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Speaker 1: animal is inside right right, and certainly in the case

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Speaker 1: so we've we've of course talked about like various brood

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Speaker 1: parasites in the show before, including an examples like the

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Speaker 1: cuckoo uh and, in which case you know, the and

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Speaker 1: a mother bird may not be able to tell if

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Speaker 1: one of the eggs has been placed into her nest

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Speaker 1: by another species. But speaking of mysterious and and difficult

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Speaker 1: to identify orbs uh So, the idea that made us

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Speaker 1: want to do this episode was something that you shared

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Speaker 1: with me last week. It was a news article about

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Speaker 1: a really interesting fossil find. This was so the article

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Speaker 1: you shared was a June NPR article by Nell Greenfield Boice,

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Speaker 1: and it tells the story of how a paleontologist from

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Speaker 1: u T. Austin named Julia Clark was visiting a colleague

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Speaker 1: named David Rubil R Rogers, who works at Chile's National

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Speaker 1: Museum of Natural History. And this was back in and

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Speaker 1: Ruble R Rogers apparently wanted Clark's opinion on a very

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Speaker 1: strange fossil in his collection, which had been found in

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Speaker 1: an article way back in two thousand eleven. Specifically, it

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Speaker 1: was on an island off the tip of the Antarctic

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Speaker 1: Peninsula called Seymour Island, and Seymour Island has been a

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Speaker 1: rich site for fossil excavations for more than a hundred

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Speaker 1: years now, I think I've read about fossils being found

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Speaker 1: there in the eighteen nineties. But Greenfield Voice describes this

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Speaker 1: fossil that the these two paleontologists were looking at as

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Speaker 1: more than eleven by seven inches, so it's about twenty

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Speaker 1: nine by twenty centimeters and of pretty much the exact

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Speaker 1: size and appearance of a deflated football, except its stone.

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Speaker 1: Now it's it's petrified, it's fossilized. And Ruble R Rogers

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Speaker 1: and his colleagues referred to this object as the thing.

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Speaker 1: So you can see why we were intrigued absolutely, And

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Speaker 1: the images that that that accompanied this article of the

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Speaker 1: thing do look very thing ish. Uh. It is it

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Speaker 1: almost almost looks like it's like a withered face, you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of like the face of the sorting hat or something,

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Speaker 1: or what's that the the oogie boogie cree cheer from

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Speaker 1: the night before Christmas. I was thinking exactly that, and

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Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point. The comparison to

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Speaker 1: a deflated football or this kind of wrinkly oogie boogeyman

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Speaker 1: face is really good because when you look at this object,

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Speaker 1: even though it is now fully fossilized, it is basically

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Speaker 1: it is a mineral product. You can immediately see in

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Speaker 1: its creases and textures the remnants of what must have

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Speaker 1: been some kind of soft leathery membrane collapsed in on itself. So, yes,

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Speaker 1: it's mysterious. Yes it's creepy. It is definitely a thing.

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Speaker 1: But what is it? It's just this strange, collapsed, deflated orb. Well,

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Speaker 1: upon further analysis, the researchers here figured out that this

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Speaker 1: was an egg. It's a fossil of a giant soft

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Speaker 1: shelled egg from around sixty eight million years ago, so

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Speaker 1: that this would be just towards the ends of the

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Speaker 1: Cretaceous period, near the KPg boundary that marks the end

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Speaker 1: of the non avian dynah sours and the researchers published

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Speaker 1: their findings in the journal Nature earlier this month. The

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Speaker 1: article was called a giant soft shelled egg from the

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Speaker 1: Late Cretaceous of Antarctica, and this is now the largest

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Speaker 1: soft shelled egg ever known to exist. And it's uh.

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Speaker 1: In addition to being the largest soft shelled egg, it's

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Speaker 1: the second largest egg of any kind known to ever exist,

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Speaker 1: falling only slightly behind the huge eggs of Madagascar's flightless

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Speaker 1: elephant birds, which would extinct sometime in the past few

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Speaker 1: hundred years. Yeah, we we discussed them a little bit

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Speaker 1: in our MOA episodes, right, But but even that was

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Speaker 1: only a little bit bigger than this egg. And the

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Speaker 1: author's conclude that this was probably the egg of a

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Speaker 1: gigantic marine reptile such as a mosasaur, of which adult

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Speaker 1: remains had been found nearby the same fossil beds. So

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Speaker 1: you find adult mosasaurs nearby there and around the same layer,

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Speaker 1: it seems like this very likely from a creature like that.

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Speaker 1: And on the importance of this find Greenfield voice in

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Speaker 1: her n PR piece quotes an evolutionary biologist from Princeton

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Speaker 1: University named Mary Caswell Stoddard, who says, quote, a soft

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Speaker 1: shelled fossil egg like this is a rare jim. The

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Speaker 1: lack of soft shelled fossil eggs, which are extremely rare,

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Speaker 1: makes it challenging to flesh out a detailed picture of

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Speaker 1: egg evolution invertebrates. This discovery helps provide one critical piece

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Speaker 1: of the puzzle. So this is important because it gives

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Speaker 1: us a look at something that we don't often see

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Speaker 1: captured in fossil form, the soft shelled egg, and it

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Speaker 1: helps us get a better picture of how exactly eggs

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Speaker 1: changed and evolved as dinosaurs evolved over time. Oh and

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Speaker 1: real quick, if you if you're out there listening and

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Speaker 1: you're like, okay, Mosesaur, which one is that put it

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Speaker 1: in Jurassic Park terms for me? Well, in the movie

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Speaker 1: Jurassic World, that's supposed to be a Mosesaur in the

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Speaker 1: big aquatic part of the park or the one that

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Speaker 1: like eats an executive assistant or something. Yeah, the that

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Speaker 1: that really horrible scene in the film where it where

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Speaker 1: it leaps up and eats this U this I think

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Speaker 1: otherwise innocent character in the film. Yeah, I remember that

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Speaker 1: that was. Well I'm not going to get off on

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Speaker 1: all my Jurassic World beefs, but that scene felt totally strange. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I agree, But still great dinosaur sequence. I just wish

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Speaker 1: she had been more of a villain or something. But yeah. So,

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Speaker 1: so back to the thing, so that the characteristics of

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Speaker 1: this egg are strange. Instead of the hard, calcified shells

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Speaker 1: that paleontologists used to believe, we're just the norm for dinosaurs. This,

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Speaker 1: along with other recent egg finds, for example from the

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Speaker 1: genus Protoceratops and the genus um Moossaris, reveals that many

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Speaker 1: dinosaurs and Cretaceous marine reptiles laid eggs that were like this.

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Speaker 1: That We're pliable and soft like some turtle species due today,

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Speaker 1: and it looks like it, just it varied according to

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Speaker 1: different groups of dinosaurs. So would have therapod dinosaurs like

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Speaker 1: the t rex and they would lay calcified, hard shelled eggs,

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Speaker 1: and you'd have many saua pods or hadrosaurs also laying

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Speaker 1: hard shelled, calcified eggs like the ones you would imagine

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Speaker 1: from birds or many reptiles that live on land today,

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Speaker 1: while you have these other animals like probably mosasaurs, probably

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Speaker 1: protoceratops laying softer leathery or eggs, and so the question is,

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Speaker 1: why would the egg shell be so thin and soft?

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Speaker 1: What's the advantage to that. Well, one possibility is maybe

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Speaker 1: that's just the way things had always been, and they

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Speaker 1: would stay that way unless they were driven by specific

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Speaker 1: environmental pressures to become otherwise, to harden and calcify. The

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Speaker 1: researchers in this other Nature paper from this year, the

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Speaker 1: one I mentioned a minute ago, it's it's just called

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Speaker 1: the first dinosaur egg was soft. They argued that ancestral

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Speaker 1: dinosaurs probably all laid soft shelled eggs, and then over time,

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Speaker 1: over the millions of years, via convergent evolution, several different

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Speaker 1: groups of later dinosaurs independently evolved the adaptation of hard

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Speaker 1: shelled eggs at least three different times that we know of.

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Speaker 1: So there would have been just been evolutionary pressure for

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Speaker 1: thicker shells on some of these other dinosaurs, but apparently

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Speaker 1: not on this one. Probably not on this mosasaur creature.

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Speaker 1: Uh so, so, looking specifically at the thing, the authors

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Speaker 1: of that study in Nature posits something really interesting about it.

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Speaker 1: They say at the end of their abstract quote, such

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Speaker 1: a large egg with a relatively thin egg shell may

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Speaker 1: reflect a derived constraints associated with body shape, reproductive investment

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Speaker 1: linked with gigantism and lepido sarian viviparity, in which a

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Speaker 1: vestigial egg is laid and hatches immediately. So we don't

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Speaker 1: know this for sure, but what they're saying it looks

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Speaker 1: like here is this was very likely a creature that

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Speaker 1: laid an egg, but it was almost a sort of

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Speaker 1: egg assisted live birth. So you would lay lay a soft, thin,

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Speaker 1: pliable egg and then nearly immediately the hatchling would tear

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Speaker 1: out of this egg sack and escape, and then the

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Speaker 1: egg would fall to the ocean floor and collapse. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: all right, yeah, I think this this is making sense

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Speaker 1: here because, uh, I mean, you can imagine the world

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Speaker 1: of the mosasaur like like all aquatic worlds, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's probably not a really peaceful place. So

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Speaker 1: that uh, that creature, that that young ling needs to

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Speaker 1: be highly developed and just ready to burst out and go,

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Speaker 1: not to sink to the bottom of the muck. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and this level of maturity at the time of hatching

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Speaker 1: is a theme that will come back to a few

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Speaker 1: other times here. Yeah. In fact, our our next example

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Speaker 1: of curious eggs from the natural world gets into this

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Speaker 1: a little bit. I want to talk about the eggs

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Speaker 1: of the volcano birds. Good. So uh, specifically we're going

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Speaker 1: to be talking about the Malayo birds of the You'll

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Speaker 1: find them on the Indonesian island of Sulawesti uh and

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Speaker 1: then there's a smaller island named Bhutan where you'll also

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Speaker 1: find them, uh and Uh. Sulawesi is one of the

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Speaker 1: four Greater Sunda Islands, actually the world's eleventh largest island.

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Speaker 1: I believe listeners might remember us from discussing this in

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Speaker 1: the recent episode about archaeological finds there that may push

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Speaker 1: back the earliest date for known examples of hunting scenes

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Speaker 1: and prehistoric art. Oh. Yeah, and there was also a

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Speaker 1: question I think about whether the same cave artwork in

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Speaker 1: Indonesia depicted theory and thropes right, the idea of of

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Speaker 1: uh theeomorphic or animal form humans, and if so, whether

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Speaker 1: that would push back the earliest physical evidence we have

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Speaker 1: of fantasy thinking or supernatural magical thinking in humans. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so as far as I know, that's still kind of

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Speaker 1: an open question. More research remains to be uh conducted.

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Speaker 1: But it's certainly exciting. But also the Malayo bird is

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Speaker 1: rather exciting. I was not familiar with this creature until

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Speaker 1: very recently. But basically it's a it's a chicken sized

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Speaker 1: bird and we had and of course it lays eggs.

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Speaker 1: And one of the important jobs of an egg layer is,

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Speaker 1: of course, uh to provide for the eggs incubation. Now,

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Speaker 1: in some cases, an egg uh may basically be ready

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Speaker 1: to go, like we said, the second it comes out, uh,

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Speaker 1: But then other times the egg needs to uh be

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Speaker 1: cared for, It needs to be incubated a bit longer.

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Speaker 1: And in many cases, you know, a bird is just

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Speaker 1: going to use their own body to incubate the egg.

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Speaker 1: This is the classic scenario of a chicken um uh

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Speaker 1: you know, laying laying on its eggs. The example of

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Speaker 1: penguins keeping their the eggs warm, uh, you know, by

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Speaker 1: their feet that sort of thing. It's a good energy

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Speaker 1: move because I mean, you've got extra body heat coming

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Speaker 1: off of you, whether you want that or not, why

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Speaker 1: not put it to use exactly, And then it also

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Speaker 1: opens up the door for various, uh, additional strategies, such

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Speaker 1: as again the cuckoo's brood parasites that don't actually incubate

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Speaker 1: the egg further themselves, but have another bird another species

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Speaker 1: do it through a mix of mimicry and or threats

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Speaker 1: of violence. But then there are also there are sort

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Speaker 1: of environmental engineers, animals that use the environment that build

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Speaker 1: structures of some kind to help them incubate eggs without

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Speaker 1: having to make a personal time commitment of just sitting

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Speaker 1: on it the whole time. That's right, I mean it's

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Speaker 1: almost it's almost as if the bird would think back,

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Speaker 1: It's like, all right, what am I doing here? I'm

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Speaker 1: providing heat? Where else can I get heat? Um? So,

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Speaker 1: like in Australia you see the example of the bush turkey,

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Speaker 1: which actually builds a compost pile that incubates the eggs

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Speaker 1: via the heat of microbial decay. Oh yeah, these things

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Speaker 1: are great. I think some listeners in Australia have actually

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Speaker 1: talked to us about them before, regarding them somewhat as

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Speaker 1: pests for making giant mounds in their yard and things

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Speaker 1: like this. But uh, but yeah, the the bush turkey

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Speaker 1: or brush turkey, these are examples of these mega owed birds,

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Speaker 1: uh that that are. They're sort of like the beavers

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Speaker 1: of the bird world. Yeah. And uh, you know, if you,

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Speaker 1: if anyone out there, if you, if you like like me,

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Speaker 1: if you have a compost, uh, you know, spinner that

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Speaker 1: sort of thing, you'll notice it does heat up in there.

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Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of activity going on inside

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Speaker 1: the compost. When my son was younger, he would call

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Speaker 1: it the hot hot machine. And indeed that's what the

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Speaker 1: bush turkey has done here, is that it creates its

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Speaker 1: own hot hot machine to incubate the eggs. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: it makes a big compost pile out of litter and

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Speaker 1: leaf litter and things like that that I've read. I

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Speaker 1: think sometimes that they can be as big as a car.

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Speaker 1: Like these piles can be huge. Yeah, their size, well,

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Speaker 1: I can see why it could be in some cases

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Speaker 1: considered a pest because it just creates a big old heap.

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Speaker 1: But you know what, if if you got a heap

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Speaker 1: in your yard, don't be ashamed, don't be embarrassed, be

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Speaker 1: proud of your heat pointed out to your neighbors, say,

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Speaker 1: check out that heap. That's really cool. It's hot. It's

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Speaker 1: the hot, hot heat. Yeah, alright, so let's get back

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Speaker 1: to the Malayo bird here, uh, which which also has

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Speaker 1: a cool pair of solutions to this problem. It depends

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Speaker 1: on one of two options for the incubation of its eggs,

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Speaker 1: either by burying its eggs in solar heated sands. So

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Speaker 1: there's some hot sand over here, I'll put my eggs

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Speaker 1: in there. Uh. Solar power will do the rest or.

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Speaker 1: And this is the exciting part. Burying them in geothermally

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Speaker 1: heated volcanic soils, hot sands adjacent to volcanic events. That's

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Speaker 1: a strategy on the edge that that that bird is

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Speaker 1: living on the edge. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's pretty amazing.

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Speaker 1: There's a wonderful uh some wonderful footage of this as well,

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Speaker 1: and it's just it's almost phoenix like this idea right

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Speaker 1: of of of the the egg being deposited in the

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Speaker 1: of volcanically heated ground and then it emerges. Um. By

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Speaker 1: the way, the maleos egg is roughly watermelon shaped. And

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Speaker 1: I was reading in a two thousand seventeen study from

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Speaker 1: Princeton University that was doing like kind of an overall

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Speaker 1: uh you know, catalog ng of egg sizes and characteristics.

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Speaker 1: They point out that it is the most elliptical of

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Speaker 1: all Avian eggs, and the idea here is that the

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Speaker 1: bird may have evolved to become a skillful flyer, and

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Speaker 1: its egg may also have evolved this way to accommodate

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Speaker 1: a streamlined body that is built for instantaneous flight. Now,

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Speaker 1: wait a minute, would that mean the egg was shaped

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Speaker 1: to accommodate the body of the of the embryo inside it,

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Speaker 1: or of the mother that's carrying it before it is

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Speaker 1: laid Um my interpretation, My understanding is that we're dealing

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Speaker 1: more with the chick because the chick when it when

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Speaker 1: it hatches, needs to be ready to go. Because the

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Speaker 1: whole idea of letting a volcano incubate your eggs letting

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Speaker 1: a volcano raise your children, is that you don't have

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Speaker 1: to do anything. When the egg hatches. Uh, the mother

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Speaker 1: Malao is long gone, so so the young milo, the

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Speaker 1: maleo chick hatches and is on its own and ready

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Speaker 1: to fly almost immediately. And this is actually a very

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Speaker 1: special feature of megapode birds generally the megapodes. I was

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Speaker 1: just wondering, Actually, everybody I've heard pronounced this word, says megapodes.

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Speaker 1: But then I was thinking about the antipodes, and I

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Speaker 1: was like, it isn't megapodes birds, but no, I think

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Speaker 1: it's megapodes anyway. Um, but yeah, these other birds, like

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Speaker 1: the bush turkey, are famous for having young that are

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Speaker 1: extremely quick to adapt to life, like immediately after hatching.

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Speaker 1: They can run around, they can hunt, they can fly

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Speaker 1: on a dime. All right, on that note, we're going

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Speaker 1: to take a quick break, but we'll be right back

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Speaker 1: with more eggs. Thank alright, we're back. So what's next

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Speaker 1: in the egg chamber here? Joe? Well, Robert, as soon

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Speaker 1: as you suggested the idea of doing an episode on eggs,

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Speaker 1: my mind instantly filled with thoughts of Ridley Scott's Alien

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Speaker 1: because I think, you know, we come back to this

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Speaker 1: text quite a bit, and I think of John Hurt

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Speaker 1: descending into an enclosed pit of these leathery orbs, and

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Speaker 1: then he comes in closer to get a better look

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Speaker 1: at one, and one of the eggs nearby starts to throb,

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Speaker 1: and it's flaps peel back, and of course we all

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Speaker 1: know what happens next, right, the parasite and just leaps out,

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Speaker 1: attaches itself to its to his face immobilizes him and

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Speaker 1: begins putting some kind of alien pupa in his body.

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Speaker 1: So in Alien, we're presented with a vision of a

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Speaker 1: sort of predatory egg or ambush egg, and an egg

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Speaker 1: which opens to unleash a parasite that requires no additional

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Speaker 1: maturation outside the egg before it is lethal. And that

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Speaker 1: made me wonder, is there anything like a predatory egg

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Speaker 1: in the natural world? Yeah, because this is of course

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Speaker 1: the most famous example is Alien BC versions of this

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Speaker 1: throughout science fiction influenced by Alien, where there's some sort

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Speaker 1: of horrible egg and yeah, you look at it wrong

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Speaker 1: and it will open and get you, or you will

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Speaker 1: open and dix. It exudes some sort of a parasite

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Speaker 1: that will creep up on you and get you. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Now I couldn't find anything exactly like Alien, but there

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Speaker 1: are some pretty close parallels. In fact, things we've already

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Speaker 1: talked about a good bit on the podcast, so we're

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Speaker 1: not going to linger on too much, but I want

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Speaker 1: to go in a few directions with this. One is

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Speaker 1: just too talk about an interesting distinction in zoology that

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Speaker 1: we've already been coming up against the border of and

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Speaker 1: that's the relevant distinction between altriciality and precociality and animals.

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Speaker 1: So think of the hatchlings of a songbird, like like

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Speaker 1: a sparrow, you know, the passive forms here the sparrow.

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Speaker 1: Once it emerges from an egg, it is helpless. It

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Speaker 1: could not survive on its own. It lacks the ability

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Speaker 1: to fly, and I'm not sure if it even lacks

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Speaker 1: the ability to walk really, I mean, it can't move

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Speaker 1: around much by itself. It certainly can't forage for itself.

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Speaker 1: Once it hatches. The sparrow hatchling sits in the nest

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Speaker 1: waiting to be brought food while it matures. And there

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Speaker 1: there are many animals that are like this, you know,

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Speaker 1: upon whether it's hatching for an egg or live birth.

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Speaker 1: Upon being born, they can't really do much for themselves.

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Speaker 1: They certainly can't move around much. And a species like

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Speaker 1: this would be called altricial, meaning it's young or relatively helpless,

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Speaker 1: unable to move around by themselves for a long time

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Speaker 1: after they're born or hatched. The opposite of altriciality is

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Speaker 1: known as precociality, and this is from the same root

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Speaker 1: word is precocious, a word that often gets applied to

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Speaker 1: like creepily mature human children. Yes, when there's the little

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Speaker 1: boy who speaks like an adult man, and you know,

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Speaker 1: quite surely, temple Is is often an example of this. Uh.

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Speaker 1: A precocial species is one that matures and is able

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Speaker 1: to move around on its own and finn for itself

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Speaker 1: relatively soon after being born or hatched. I think the

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Speaker 1: most common metric used to measure this distinction is a

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Speaker 1: movement like how much can this animal, you know, do

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Speaker 1: its own locomotion? And there are some animals that take

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Speaker 1: precociality to the extreme, and these are known as super

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Speaker 1: precocial animals. A very commonly cited example is exactly what

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Speaker 1: we've been talking about already, megapode birds. Of course, the

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Speaker 1: megapodes include the malayo bird that you were just talking about.

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Speaker 1: They include the mound builder birds like the brush turkeys

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Speaker 1: or the bush turkeys, and obviously not all of them

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Speaker 1: are exactly the same, but megapodes generally you're going to

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Speaker 1: see that once they hatch, they're able to see. They're

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Speaker 1: not born blind. They can see, they can walk, they

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Speaker 1: can run, they can hunt, they can fly pretty much

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Speaker 1: on the same day that they emerge from their eggs,

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Speaker 1: and that that's pretty amazing. Yeah, it really throws a

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Speaker 1: lot of our especially um human centric ideas about about

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Speaker 1: birth and um and and and maturity right out the

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Speaker 1: window totally, because obviously humans are relatively altrichial, right, um.

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Speaker 1: But by this metric, the xenomorph face hugger from Alien

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Speaker 1: would be an example of super precociality. Right. It's taken

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Speaker 1: to the logical extreme. It's a parasite that that only

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Speaker 1: needs one host, and it is ready to attack that

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Speaker 1: hosts literally the moment it emerges from its eggs, So

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Speaker 1: it's already hunting within seconds of of cracking out. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and of course we could easily do the whole podcasts

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Speaker 1: about like each each phase in the life cycle of

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Speaker 1: the zeno morph. But you know, I was just thinking,

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Speaker 1: it's like, in a way, is the face hugger that

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Speaker 1: emerges from the egg like that seems to be like

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Speaker 1: the the actual organism itself, right, Uh? It depending on

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Speaker 1: how you interpret it. Well, yeah, it's interesting. It's it's

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Speaker 1: a it's a creature with a life cycle that's got

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Speaker 1: two completely morphologically different stages that are that are you know,

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Speaker 1: like trophically staggered. So one life cycle gives rise to

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Speaker 1: the next life cycle, but they're not the like, you know,

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Speaker 1: adults do not emerge from the egg. The face Hugger

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Speaker 1: emerges from the egg, and then it finds a human.

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Speaker 1: It implants in the human the I guess there's a

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Speaker 1: pupa that just states there and then that becomes the adult.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, depending on how you look at it, the

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Speaker 1: face hugger could be considered like the the the purest

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Speaker 1: form of the organism before it ends up taking on

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Speaker 1: properties of the the host organism. Oh I see, yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but by that countant as well. I've also seen interpretations

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Speaker 1: that that say, well, the face hugger is essentially like

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Speaker 1: a mobile sex organ like, it's not it's it's not

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Speaker 1: the organism itself. It is a precursor to it um

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Speaker 1: and then ultimately the whole life cycle is so suitably

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00:24:30,359 --> 00:24:33,560
Speaker 1: alien that it doesn't completely line up with with even

426
00:24:33,600 --> 00:24:35,879
Speaker 1: some of the elaborate life cycles that we see here

427
00:24:35,920 --> 00:24:39,080
Speaker 1: on Earth. And we do have some really elaborate ones. Yeah,

428
00:24:39,119 --> 00:24:42,120
Speaker 1: And I would say of all the life cycles that

429
00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:44,800
Speaker 1: we see on Earth, I think probably the one that

430
00:24:44,880 --> 00:24:49,280
Speaker 1: the alien creature is the closest to is something we've

431
00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:51,080
Speaker 1: actually talked about a good bit on the show before.

432
00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:53,520
Speaker 1: So we're not going to rehash everything here, but just

433
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:58,439
Speaker 1: real quickly, parasitoid wasps um so parasitoid wasps you know

434
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:01,720
Speaker 1: there are different Well actually you could just say parasitoids

435
00:25:01,760 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 1: in general, but the parasitoid wasp the hymenopter in parasitoids

436
00:25:06,040 --> 00:25:09,119
Speaker 1: are a really good example where what they will often

437
00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:12,080
Speaker 1: do is they will find a host organism such as

438
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:15,960
Speaker 1: a tarantula or something like that, they will immobilize it,

439
00:25:16,240 --> 00:25:19,320
Speaker 1: so they injected with a paralyzing venom, seal it up

440
00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:21,719
Speaker 1: some way with their eggs, either the eggs planted on

441
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:24,320
Speaker 1: it or near it, and then when the eggs hatch,

442
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 1: they consume this animal, this like spider or whatever it is,

443
00:25:28,880 --> 00:25:32,600
Speaker 1: alive from the inside out as they mature toward their

444
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: adult stage. I mean, that's that's pretty dang close to

445
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:38,560
Speaker 1: exactly what goes on with the xenomorph right. Oh yeah,

446
00:25:38,640 --> 00:25:40,879
Speaker 1: And in many cases it's even more amazing than that,

447
00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:44,119
Speaker 1: because you get into these examples of the of the

448
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:49,280
Speaker 1: of the parasitoid wasp altering the behavior of the host organism.

449
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:52,919
Speaker 1: It gets uh yeah, it's certainly a case where nature

450
00:25:53,320 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 1: um at least equals, but I think probably exceeds uh,

451
00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:00,359
Speaker 1: just the the complexity of the xenomorphs and area, at

452
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:02,560
Speaker 1: least in this case. Yeah, I guess it's a it's

453
00:26:02,560 --> 00:26:05,000
Speaker 1: a cliche for us at this point, but nature is

454
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 1: stranger than fiction. You can't make this stuff up. Yeah,

455
00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:12,600
Speaker 1: But to explore some more new territory, I was wondering

456
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:15,920
Speaker 1: about the idea of being attacked by an egg itself.

457
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:18,399
Speaker 1: Is there such a thing as like a real like

458
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:21,240
Speaker 1: predatory egg, not just what comes out of the egg.

459
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:25,199
Speaker 1: And I couldn't find anything directly like this, Like you know,

460
00:26:25,280 --> 00:26:27,640
Speaker 1: I was looking for something like a you know, an

461
00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 1: animal that like mimics an egg, like an egg mimic

462
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:33,760
Speaker 1: decoy that attacks I don't know, when you come up

463
00:26:33,800 --> 00:26:36,760
Speaker 1: on it or something. I couldn't find anything exactly like that.

464
00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:38,960
Speaker 1: If if you know of examples out there that I

465
00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:42,359
Speaker 1: couldn't find, please email make us aware. But you mean

466
00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:44,679
Speaker 1: like a creature that pretends to be an egg and

467
00:26:44,720 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 1: then would prey upon something that eats eggs. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

468
00:26:48,320 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 1: that's what I mean. Do what mean do you know

469
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 1: of something like that? Um? No, I don't know, Okay.

470
00:26:53,760 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 1: I think there's some sort of robot in Teenage Muntant

471
00:26:55,800 --> 00:26:58,200
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles. Right, don't they have some robots that look

472
00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:01,560
Speaker 1: like eggs? I don't know, but if they were turtle eggs,

473
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:04,240
Speaker 1: they may very well be soft and leathery shelled instead

474
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:06,720
Speaker 1: of hard shelled. Oh, we have just received an update

475
00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:10,880
Speaker 1: from our producer Seth, who has been uh digging into

476
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: old episodes of Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles, and he informs

477
00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:16,440
Speaker 1: us that I am thinking of the MOUs er robots,

478
00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:20,840
Speaker 1: which are not I think supposed to be eggs, but

479
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:23,480
Speaker 1: do look sort of egg like. So it's just kind

480
00:27:23,520 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 1: of coincidence of their design. Yeah. I think Seth told

481
00:27:26,920 --> 00:27:29,359
Speaker 1: us recently that he's made it to season forty six

482
00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:32,879
Speaker 1: of the Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. So so best of

483
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:36,880
Speaker 1: luck to a Seth on your on your turtle journey. Um,

484
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:38,919
Speaker 1: but but I want to bring it back. Okay, So,

485
00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:42,160
Speaker 1: in terms of being injured or attacked by an egg itself,

486
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 1: I did find something. It wasn't active deliberate violence by

487
00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:48,800
Speaker 1: an egg, but I did find something here. So I

488
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:51,360
Speaker 1: was reading an article in The New York Times from

489
00:27:51,359 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 1: December by very Nique Greenwood, which was based in part

490
00:27:57,119 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: on a series of findings by a couple of a

491
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:04,720
Speaker 1: coup sticks experts named Anthony Nash and Lauren von Blonde,

492
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:08,040
Speaker 1: who at the time worked at an acoustics firm that

493
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:12,040
Speaker 1: was called Charles M. Salter and Associates. Now, what would

494
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:16,280
Speaker 1: acoustics experts have to do with eggs? Well, their research,

495
00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:19,840
Speaker 1: which was presented in early December at the Acoustical Society

496
00:28:19,840 --> 00:28:24,240
Speaker 1: of America meeting in New Orleans, concerned the physical properties,

497
00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:30,280
Speaker 1: especially the loudness, of exploding eggs. Now we're again, We're

498
00:28:30,320 --> 00:28:33,920
Speaker 1: just talking about regular chicken eggs here, no gegaresque insect,

499
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:37,399
Speaker 1: trapped mine eggs or anything like that. Uh. Nash and

500
00:28:37,520 --> 00:28:41,800
Speaker 1: von Blonde had been hired as expert witnesses for the

501
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:45,840
Speaker 1: defense in a recent lawsuit. Unfortunately, I don't think the

502
00:28:45,920 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 1: real names of the plaintiff, for the defendant, or the

503
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:52,120
Speaker 1: location wherever published. I think that stuff remains confidential, so

504
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 1: we only know about it from their research and the

505
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:58,280
Speaker 1: reporting on that research, where the details were anonymized. Uh

506
00:28:58,280 --> 00:29:00,520
Speaker 1: And I think the case was eventually settled out of court,

507
00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:03,920
Speaker 1: so it may remain a mystery forever. But in broad

508
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:08,200
Speaker 1: anonymous outline the alleged facts of the case, whereas follows

509
00:29:09,040 --> 00:29:13,640
Speaker 1: plaintiff walks into a restaurant. He orders a hard boiled egg.

510
00:29:13,800 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 1: I'm assuming he ordered some other stuff too. That would

511
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 1: be a pretty strange thing to order at a restaurant

512
00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:20,360
Speaker 1: by itself, but the egg is the important part here.

513
00:29:20,960 --> 00:29:24,120
Speaker 1: They bring him his hard boiled egg. He bites into

514
00:29:24,160 --> 00:29:27,840
Speaker 1: the egg. Upon being pierced by the plaintiff's teeth, the

515
00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:32,440
Speaker 1: egg explodes, as in, it literally explodes, resulting in what

516
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:36,280
Speaker 1: the planeiff claimed were severe burns and actual hearing damage

517
00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 1: from the volume of the explosion. Now, when I first

518
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 1: read that, I was like, what could could that be real?

519
00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:48,520
Speaker 1: I'm having a hard time imagining it that that really happened.

520
00:29:48,560 --> 00:29:51,920
Speaker 1: But you can use the old YouTube and see for yourself.

521
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:55,000
Speaker 1: Unless there are a bunch of like coordinated egg explosion

522
00:29:55,080 --> 00:29:59,760
Speaker 1: hoaxers all doing homebrew video manipulation or special effects, exploding

523
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:04,000
Speaker 1: egg are absolutely a thing, uh And they they can

524
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:06,840
Speaker 1: actually be done very easily if you involve one crucial

525
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:12,000
Speaker 1: piece of technology, and that is the microwave oven. So

526
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:14,600
Speaker 1: perhaps you yourself have at some point tried to cook

527
00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:19,200
Speaker 1: a whole intact egg shell on inside a microwave, and

528
00:30:19,240 --> 00:30:22,400
Speaker 1: if so, I would not be surprised if you have

529
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:25,680
Speaker 1: detonated an egg bomb yourself in this way. Microwaving a

530
00:30:25,720 --> 00:30:28,560
Speaker 1: whole egg often results in a big pop and a

531
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:33,800
Speaker 1: gooey mess, But sometimes a microwaved egg, especially a microwave

532
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 1: reheating of a previously hard boiled egg, can result in

533
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:41,480
Speaker 1: an egg that holds together through the cooking, So you

534
00:30:41,520 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 1: can microwave it for however long you take it out

535
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:47,440
Speaker 1: of the microwave. But if you disturb it in just

536
00:30:47,520 --> 00:30:50,240
Speaker 1: the wrong way, say by piercing it with a fork

537
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:53,920
Speaker 1: or with your teeth, it suddenly explodes with a with

538
00:30:53,960 --> 00:30:56,760
Speaker 1: a pop, a real like loud sound like a firecracker.

539
00:30:56,760 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 1: An egg hot egg pieces go everywhere. And we know

540
00:31:00,040 --> 00:31:03,680
Speaker 1: this is possible just from publicly available video evidence. People

541
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:05,960
Speaker 1: are you know, messing around with this in their houses

542
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:09,240
Speaker 1: all the time, apparently, But how often does this happen,

543
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:13,320
Speaker 1: what are the physics underlying it, and how dangerous is it? Yeah,

544
00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:15,960
Speaker 1: because I mean, obviously it makes sense that an egg

545
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:18,360
Speaker 1: could pop, you know, you could have pressure built up

546
00:31:18,360 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 1: in there. In fact, really we use an egg cooker

547
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:22,640
Speaker 1: in the house a lot, and they have that spike

548
00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:26,360
Speaker 1: in the middle that you're supposed to use to to

549
00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 1: to make a hole in the shell of the egg

550
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:31,040
Speaker 1: before you cook it, which I you know, I always

551
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:35,200
Speaker 1: assumed was to keep it from bursting or or even exploding. Now,

552
00:31:35,240 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 1: I was surprised about the idea that it could allegedly

553
00:31:39,480 --> 00:31:42,440
Speaker 1: cause hearing damage. The idea of a bursting egg, I

554
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:43,960
Speaker 1: would imagine it would be just kind of a you know,

555
00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:48,760
Speaker 1: a popping situation. Right, the hearing damage was alleged by

556
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 1: the plaintiff, and we'll we'll try to get to the

557
00:31:51,040 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 1: bottom of that. But um so what was what did

558
00:31:53,800 --> 00:31:56,880
Speaker 1: their research consists of when they're looking into this national

559
00:31:56,960 --> 00:32:01,680
Speaker 1: Von Bland's research first tested actual eggs using the same

560
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:05,520
Speaker 1: reheating method that was supposedly employed by the restaurant that

561
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:08,840
Speaker 1: was the defendant in the lawsuit. So you would take

562
00:32:08,880 --> 00:32:12,400
Speaker 1: a previously hard boiled egg and you'd reheat it by

563
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 1: microwaving it for three minutes in a water bath. Now,

564
00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:19,800
Speaker 1: the researchers here did admit that after several explosions coated

565
00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:23,080
Speaker 1: the inside of the microwave with egg gunk, they realized

566
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:26,600
Speaker 1: they needed some kind of permeable containment device, So they

567
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:29,120
Speaker 1: came up with the addition of like a nylon stocking

568
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:32,440
Speaker 1: type casement for the egg. But with this in place,

569
00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:36,000
Speaker 1: they repeated the experiment with about a hundred eggs, taking

570
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:38,880
Speaker 1: the temperature of the water bath and taking the temperature

571
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:41,600
Speaker 1: of the egg itself each time by piercing it with

572
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 1: a meat thermometer. And when the eggs were done microwaving

573
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:47,600
Speaker 1: they did the piercing, they would take it out, put

574
00:32:47,600 --> 00:32:49,640
Speaker 1: it on the floor and stabbed the probe of the

575
00:32:49,640 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 1: meat thermometer in to take the internal temperature and to

576
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:56,120
Speaker 1: see if piercing the egg would cause it to explode.

577
00:32:56,600 --> 00:32:59,000
Speaker 1: And what they found was that some eggs did nothing,

578
00:32:59,600 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: some exploded inside the microwave while cooking. But of the

579
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:08,160
Speaker 1: one hundred eggs, roughly they found about one third survived

580
00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:12,320
Speaker 1: the reheating itself, only to explode on the outside of

581
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:16,000
Speaker 1: the microwave once poked with the thermometer. So I think

582
00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:19,720
Speaker 1: it's pretty conclusive the explosion thing, where like rupturing a

583
00:33:20,040 --> 00:33:23,640
Speaker 1: microwave heated hard boiled egg absolutely can cause it to

584
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:26,840
Speaker 1: blow up. That just happens, and it looks like it

585
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:29,600
Speaker 1: happens roughly about one third of the time. But of

586
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:32,880
Speaker 1: the ones that did explode, the loudness of the explosion

587
00:33:32,920 --> 00:33:35,640
Speaker 1: at its peak was between eighty six and a hundred

588
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:38,720
Speaker 1: and thirty three decibels at a distance of twelve inches

589
00:33:38,800 --> 00:33:42,440
Speaker 1: from the egg, and Nash compared this too at the

590
00:33:42,560 --> 00:33:45,600
Speaker 1: upper end the hundred and thirty three disciples. He compared

591
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:48,600
Speaker 1: it to the loudness of something like a chainsaw, which is,

592
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:51,560
Speaker 1: you know, loud but not usually a source of hearing

593
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:54,960
Speaker 1: damage on a on a short time of exposure on

594
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:58,040
Speaker 1: its own, and based on this reasoning, Nash claimed that

595
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:01,640
Speaker 1: actual hearing damage from an explode egg was not impossible,

596
00:34:01,720 --> 00:34:04,120
Speaker 1: but that it was unlikely. Though at the same time,

597
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:06,760
Speaker 1: I think it is worth noting that these scientists were

598
00:34:06,840 --> 00:34:09,520
Speaker 1: hired by the defense in the trial to be expert

599
00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:13,160
Speaker 1: witnesses for that side, so not not impugning their reputation,

600
00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:16,040
Speaker 1: but it is worth noting the interests involved. Yeah, so

601
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:17,960
Speaker 1: we might need to take this particular egg study with

602
00:34:18,080 --> 00:34:20,680
Speaker 1: a grain of salt, maybe a little pepper, a little

603
00:34:20,760 --> 00:34:26,319
Speaker 1: mustard if we some gherkins. Definitely so. But realistically I

604
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:28,799
Speaker 1: guess it sounds like it would be loud enough that

605
00:34:28,880 --> 00:34:32,520
Speaker 1: if you just heard exploding eggs all day, it could

606
00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:35,359
Speaker 1: hurt your hearing, but maybe not just one going off

607
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:38,360
Speaker 1: that could be the case. Then again, I mean we

608
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:40,480
Speaker 1: don't know for sure. I mean, like it's positively that

609
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:43,759
Speaker 1: they didn't rule out the possibility that there could there

610
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:46,879
Speaker 1: could be hearing damage in some kind of outside case here,

611
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 1: but the standard, the average loudness of the explosion they

612
00:34:52,080 --> 00:34:54,719
Speaker 1: thought probably would not hurt your ears if it just

613
00:34:54,760 --> 00:34:57,680
Speaker 1: happened one time. But then, but that's not to say

614
00:34:57,719 --> 00:34:59,360
Speaker 1: this is fine. I mean, you would not want to

615
00:34:59,360 --> 00:35:02,759
Speaker 1: bite into one these eggs. I think burns are obviously

616
00:35:03,160 --> 00:35:07,000
Speaker 1: why that could happen. And just generally, anything exploding inside

617
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:10,840
Speaker 1: your mouth, i'd imagine even could just probably startle you

618
00:35:11,040 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 1: enough that you might get whiplash or something like that.

619
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:17,120
Speaker 1: I mean, that's biting into something that explodes as a

620
00:35:17,120 --> 00:35:20,000
Speaker 1: horrifying idea. Yeah, and I do want to drive home here.

621
00:35:20,560 --> 00:35:22,239
Speaker 1: If you're out there and you're listening to this, and

622
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:24,399
Speaker 1: maybe you're stuck in your house and you're a little

623
00:35:24,400 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 1: bit bored, do not experiment with exploding eggs just you know,

624
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:32,319
Speaker 1: have an egg for breakfast maybe and think about this,

625
00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:34,400
Speaker 1: But you don't try and make eggs explode just because

626
00:35:34,400 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 1: you heard about it on this show, right, Uh. And

627
00:35:36,520 --> 00:35:38,839
Speaker 1: and so there's a more interesting question that we still

628
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:41,680
Speaker 1: haven't solved, which is why would the eggs explode at all?

629
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:44,360
Speaker 1: You can kind of imagine, like, okay, the heating, the

630
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:47,120
Speaker 1: build up of pressure and steam as could cause it

631
00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:50,840
Speaker 1: to explode while it's cooking inside the microwave. Why is

632
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:53,880
Speaker 1: it that there's this pattern where about a third of

633
00:35:53,920 --> 00:35:57,880
Speaker 1: the eggs that they tested out here didn't explode while cooking,

634
00:35:58,120 --> 00:36:01,560
Speaker 1: but did explode once you poked them with something. That's right, Yeah,

635
00:36:01,560 --> 00:36:03,799
Speaker 1: it would seem like they would reach the because again

636
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:06,879
Speaker 1: coming back to my experience using an egg cooker, is okay,

637
00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:08,319
Speaker 1: we poked the hole on the top of the egg

638
00:36:08,360 --> 00:36:10,920
Speaker 1: with the spike so that it doesn't rupture, I guess,

639
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:13,959
Speaker 1: and then some of the time, uh, you see, egg

640
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:18,160
Speaker 1: content has been pushed up through the hole that we created,

641
00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:21,000
Speaker 1: and other times it is not. So maybe and I've

642
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:23,520
Speaker 1: never analyzed it enough to say that it's happening a

643
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:25,480
Speaker 1: third at the time or whatnot. But maybe that's that's

644
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here. The same situation could be

645
00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 1: now So. One thing found by Nash and von Blonde

646
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:34,480
Speaker 1: was that when they measured the temperature of the water

647
00:36:34,600 --> 00:36:37,840
Speaker 1: bath that the egg was sitting in while it was microwaved,

648
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 1: and then compare that to the temperature inside the egg,

649
00:36:41,120 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 1: specifically of the yolk. There was a big difference. Of course,

650
00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:47,239
Speaker 1: the water bath was limited to two d and twelve

651
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:50,640
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit or one degrees celsius. This is the boiling

652
00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:54,239
Speaker 1: point of water. We know that, you know, at that temperature,

653
00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:58,040
Speaker 1: water doesn't really heat up beyond that because it equalizes

654
00:36:58,160 --> 00:37:00,759
Speaker 1: with the you know, with the vapor press sure around it.

655
00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 1: So so additional energy put into it goes into boiling

656
00:37:04,520 --> 00:37:07,759
Speaker 1: off more and more of the water into steam. But

657
00:37:07,880 --> 00:37:11,080
Speaker 1: the the yolk was significantly hotter than the boiling point

658
00:37:11,080 --> 00:37:13,520
Speaker 1: of water. It was there was an average of twenty

659
00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:17,040
Speaker 1: two degrees fahrenheit of difference between the water and the yolk.

660
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:20,560
Speaker 1: And yet the yolk has a significant amount of water

661
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:24,080
Speaker 1: in it. By some estimates, that chicken egg yolk is

662
00:37:24,160 --> 00:37:29,600
Speaker 1: it's something like fifty water, okay, now, yeah, yeah, of course,

663
00:37:29,640 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 1: in addition to lots of proteins and fats and stuff,

664
00:37:32,640 --> 00:37:37,239
Speaker 1: and so Nash's hypothesis about the explosion is that the

665
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:42,920
Speaker 1: microwave process, microwaving process somehow superheats little pockets of water

666
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:47,759
Speaker 1: inside the egg yolk beyond the boiling point of water. Now,

667
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:49,840
Speaker 1: there can be a couple of ways that water becomes

668
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:53,960
Speaker 1: superheated and then flashes suddenly into steam. One way is

669
00:37:54,040 --> 00:37:57,480
Speaker 1: when water is heated in a microwave with an absence

670
00:37:57,680 --> 00:38:01,320
Speaker 1: of what are called nucleation points. New cleation sites are

671
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:05,840
Speaker 1: just little places where bubbles can form naturally that allow

672
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:09,279
Speaker 1: the water to begin to convert into steam. Uh. And

673
00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:11,160
Speaker 1: this is why you might have been advised to put

674
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:13,560
Speaker 1: a little wooden coffee stir or something like that in

675
00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:15,920
Speaker 1: a mug of water if you're heating it in the microwave.

676
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 1: There have been occasions where people have gotten burns by

677
00:38:19,719 --> 00:38:25,799
Speaker 1: microwaving water, especially in very smooth, clean containers. And I've

678
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 1: read also especially when you repeatedly microwave the same container

679
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:34,480
Speaker 1: of water without like stirring it or touching it. There

680
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:36,960
Speaker 1: can be cases where the water just gets hotter and hotter,

681
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:40,239
Speaker 1: but it can't boil because there are no sites where

682
00:38:40,239 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 1: this hot massive water is able to start forming bubbles.

683
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:46,719
Speaker 1: And in these cases, the water can become hotter than

684
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:51,200
Speaker 1: its boiling point, but it looks perfectly calm until it's

685
00:38:51,239 --> 00:38:55,480
Speaker 1: disturbed in some way that suddenly does provide nucleation points. Uh.

686
00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:58,840
Speaker 1: This could include jostling the container, inserting a spoon or

687
00:38:58,840 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 1: sugar or something like. The superheated water can then quite

688
00:39:02,560 --> 00:39:06,719
Speaker 1: suddenly flash into steam and explode. But another way that

689
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:10,279
Speaker 1: water can become superheated and flash suddenly into steam is

690
00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:14,400
Speaker 1: changes in pressure. Uh. You know, remember the principles illustrated

691
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:17,320
Speaker 1: by a pressure cooker. The normal boiling point of water

692
00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:21,320
Speaker 1: is determined by atmospheric pressure, so you can actually change

693
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:23,560
Speaker 1: the boiling point of water just by going up or

694
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:26,520
Speaker 1: down in altitude. If you go higher in altitude up

695
00:39:26,520 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 1: a mountain, water converts into vapor easier at a lower temperature,

696
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:34,360
Speaker 1: and this lowers the boiling point of water, So a

697
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:36,919
Speaker 1: boiling pot of water on top of a mountain will

698
00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:39,880
Speaker 1: be cooler than a boiling point of water at sea level.

699
00:39:40,239 --> 00:39:42,279
Speaker 1: In fact, there are even stories, I think we've talked

700
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:45,360
Speaker 1: about these in a previous episode. Uh, stories of people

701
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:49,040
Speaker 1: trying to cook at super high altitudes and being unable

702
00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:52,320
Speaker 1: to do it. Like mountain climbers on everest have sometimes

703
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:56,799
Speaker 1: found that you cannot, for example, boil potatoes effectively at

704
00:39:56,840 --> 00:39:59,480
Speaker 1: the top of everest because at some point you get

705
00:39:59,520 --> 00:40:02,480
Speaker 1: so high up and the pressure is so low that

706
00:40:02,560 --> 00:40:05,160
Speaker 1: the boiling point of water gets so low that a

707
00:40:05,200 --> 00:40:07,480
Speaker 1: pot of water on a burner literally just can't get

708
00:40:07,520 --> 00:40:10,239
Speaker 1: hot enough to cook potatoes, and a reasonable amount of

709
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:12,480
Speaker 1: time your your water is boiling, but it's just not

710
00:40:12,680 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 1: very hot. Conversely, if you increase the pressure on a

711
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 1: cooking vessel by sealing it tight with the lid and

712
00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:22,719
Speaker 1: safety gasket and all that, you can actually raise the

713
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:25,239
Speaker 1: boiling point of water, allowing water to get a lot

714
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:27,239
Speaker 1: hotter than it ever would in a pot on the

715
00:40:27,280 --> 00:40:30,640
Speaker 1: stove where it can just evaporate normally, and this cooks

716
00:40:30,640 --> 00:40:34,160
Speaker 1: your food faster. This is the principle behind a pressure cooker. Um.

717
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:37,280
Speaker 1: Modern pressure cookers tend to be very safe by design,

718
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:40,440
Speaker 1: but they years ago, pressure cookers used to have a

719
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:43,759
Speaker 1: reputation for exploding. This was the thing people were afraid about,

720
00:40:43,800 --> 00:40:46,759
Speaker 1: and there are cases of this happening. You can see

721
00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 1: why they could be dangerous in principle because it's contents

722
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:53,480
Speaker 1: under pressure and it's a bunch of superheated water. If

723
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:57,080
Speaker 1: suddenly exposed to reduced pressure, that water would try to

724
00:40:57,200 --> 00:41:00,759
Speaker 1: convert from liquid water into steam really suddenly in a

725
00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:04,640
Speaker 1: kind of explosive instant. Yeah. I remember growing up and

726
00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:08,000
Speaker 1: hearing about like the canning process in which one would

727
00:41:08,239 --> 00:41:11,760
Speaker 1: put uh you know, their jars into a pressure cooker

728
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:16,640
Speaker 1: to to sterilize them. I remember there being accounts of

729
00:41:16,680 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 1: this which sounded dangerous. It sounded explosive to me. Uh.

730
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:23,840
Speaker 1: I don't know to what extent there was actually some

731
00:41:23,920 --> 00:41:26,799
Speaker 1: sort of cautionary tail involved in the telling of it,

732
00:41:26,880 --> 00:41:29,520
Speaker 1: but but I got the sense that that the cooking

733
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:32,040
Speaker 1: with a with a pressure cooker had had some sort

734
00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:34,880
Speaker 1: of inherent danger to it. I mean, there are natural

735
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:38,879
Speaker 1: dangers of like burns and stuff if you don't have

736
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:42,080
Speaker 1: a modern pressure cooker with good safety features. But I

737
00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 1: think modern pressure cookers, like if it's made by a

738
00:41:44,560 --> 00:41:47,320
Speaker 1: reputable company and all that, it's going to have safety

739
00:41:47,320 --> 00:41:50,120
Speaker 1: features in place that make it pretty darn safe to use.

740
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:52,719
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like like, yeah, we use one all the

741
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:55,840
Speaker 1: time for various uh you know, rice dishes and whatnot.

742
00:41:56,200 --> 00:41:59,239
Speaker 1: Great for lentils. Yeah. But anyway, So so back to

743
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:02,560
Speaker 1: the pressure issue. I think this is what Anthony Nash

744
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:05,360
Speaker 1: is sort of hypothesizing is happening inside the yolk of

745
00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:09,719
Speaker 1: an exploding egg. While an egg is being microwaved, It's

746
00:42:09,719 --> 00:42:13,240
Speaker 1: got this protein matrix inside the yolk that becomes hotter

747
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:16,600
Speaker 1: than the boiling point of water, and this protein matrix

748
00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 1: is holding all these little pockets of water trapped inside.

749
00:42:20,680 --> 00:42:24,839
Speaker 1: These pockets of water become superheated beyond the boiling point

750
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:27,799
Speaker 1: of water, and when the egg is pierced, these little

751
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:32,760
Speaker 1: pockets of superheated liquid water can suddenly boil. They flash

752
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:36,400
Speaker 1: into steam very rapidly, causing the egg to explode in

753
00:42:36,440 --> 00:42:39,800
Speaker 1: the process. Now, I don't know if Nash's hypothesis about

754
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:42,080
Speaker 1: the cause of the exploding eggs is correct. I can't

755
00:42:42,120 --> 00:42:44,279
Speaker 1: judge for sure, but it seems pretty plausible to me.

756
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 1: Uh And I think it's a pretty clear indication that

757
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 1: microwaving hard boiled eggs is not a very good idea.

758
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:53,600
Speaker 1: You know, if you've got cold, hard boiled eggs, why

759
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:56,040
Speaker 1: not just eat them cold or make egg salad? Yeah,

760
00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:59,640
Speaker 1: don't risk the explosion, how you know. However, all this talk, okay,

761
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:02,840
Speaker 1: we're talking and about the pressure inside the egg and

762
00:43:02,920 --> 00:43:06,200
Speaker 1: changes to to to the pressure and atmospheric pressure, it

763
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:08,759
Speaker 1: does make me wonder, Okay, could you have a scenario

764
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:13,920
Speaker 1: where your say, venturing aboard a derelict spaceship and you're

765
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:17,399
Speaker 1: encountering the eggs of another species. Who knows, like under

766
00:43:17,440 --> 00:43:23,120
Speaker 1: what atmospheric conditions they were originally? Um lane point yeah.

767
00:43:23,160 --> 00:43:25,680
Speaker 1: And and then and then what happened, you know where

768
00:43:25,719 --> 00:43:28,240
Speaker 1: they put on a ship with an entirely different pressure

769
00:43:28,640 --> 00:43:30,640
Speaker 1: and then maybe that pressure went away. Maybe the people

770
00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:33,080
Speaker 1: now discovering it bring it back to their ship and

771
00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:36,640
Speaker 1: there's a different uh air pressure scenario going on. Could

772
00:43:36,680 --> 00:43:39,880
Speaker 1: you end up with an explosive alien egg along those lines.

773
00:43:40,360 --> 00:43:45,879
Speaker 1: I'm gonna rule it physically plausible but unproven. Okay, alright, well,

774
00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:47,719
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take one more break. But

775
00:43:47,760 --> 00:43:50,200
Speaker 1: when we come back, we have a couple of more

776
00:43:50,200 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 1: eggs for you. Alright, we're back, Robert, Is it time

777
00:43:56,600 --> 00:43:59,560
Speaker 1: to pet the furry egg? Yes, let us consider the

778
00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:03,399
Speaker 1: furry egg? So, uh my, my family, like a lot

779
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:08,360
Speaker 1: of households out there, recently enjoyed viewing the excellent series

780
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:11,960
Speaker 1: The Mandalorian, which features everything I love about Star Wars,

781
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:15,319
Speaker 1: including some really cool creatures and one of the most

782
00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:17,840
Speaker 1: important in the series. This is creature that that pops

783
00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:21,680
Speaker 1: up called a mud horn, and it's this large mammalian

784
00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:24,440
Speaker 1: creature or assume, oh, we assume it to be mammalian.

785
00:44:24,920 --> 00:44:27,440
Speaker 1: Uh that looks a lot like a wooly rhino. It's

786
00:44:27,440 --> 00:44:30,120
Speaker 1: like an alien take on a wooly rhino. And as

787
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:32,480
Speaker 1: its name implies, it makes its home in the mud.

788
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:37,719
Speaker 1: Here it lays a very unique furry egg. Uh. And this,

789
00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:40,720
Speaker 1: by the way, is on the world our Volla seven

790
00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:45,319
Speaker 1: in and it's here that Jawa's consider it a delicacy.

791
00:44:45,680 --> 00:44:48,040
Speaker 1: So of course our main character ends up being sent

792
00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 1: on a quest to obtain the furry egg. Okay, I

793
00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:55,719
Speaker 1: still haven't seen this, but this sounds good. Yeah, well

794
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:57,200
Speaker 1: you're in for a treat with this one, I know,

795
00:44:57,239 --> 00:45:00,040
Speaker 1: Baby Yoda. So we've got we've got furry eggs in

796
00:45:00,200 --> 00:45:02,840
Speaker 1: Baby Yoda. What are they just trying to like cute

797
00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 1: you to death? Well, I mean, I think cute is

798
00:45:05,680 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 1: an important part of Star Wars. You gotta have a

799
00:45:07,640 --> 00:45:10,840
Speaker 1: cute element in there. And I think I think anyone who, um,

800
00:45:10,920 --> 00:45:13,919
Speaker 1: who disagrees with me on that is wrong. There's there's

801
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:15,880
Speaker 1: got to be something cute in there. And uh, and

802
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:17,600
Speaker 1: so you got, you got, you got, you got your

803
00:45:17,640 --> 00:45:20,520
Speaker 1: your furry egg here. Um. But the furry egg is

804
00:45:20,560 --> 00:45:23,479
Speaker 1: I think really something to ponder though, because in many

805
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:28,440
Speaker 1: ways it seems paradoxical and suitably alien. Right, because eggs

806
00:45:28,560 --> 00:45:30,520
Speaker 1: we tend to just assume, you know, eggs are the

807
00:45:30,560 --> 00:45:34,080
Speaker 1: domain of scale and feather, right, not the domain of fur. Sure,

808
00:45:34,560 --> 00:45:37,440
Speaker 1: fur is typically the domain of mammals. But of course

809
00:45:37,520 --> 00:45:40,920
Speaker 1: the mammalian world is not entirely devoid of egg layers,

810
00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:46,600
Speaker 1: because of course we have the monotreams. Yeah, now, monotreams

811
00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:50,360
Speaker 1: are when we're talking about monotreams, we're talking about I

812
00:45:50,400 --> 00:45:54,439
Speaker 1: think what five species around still today. One of course

813
00:45:54,520 --> 00:45:57,760
Speaker 1: is the platypus, which were largely going to leave alone

814
00:45:57,840 --> 00:46:00,799
Speaker 1: to its monstrous pools in this as because I'd like

815
00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:04,080
Speaker 1: to come back and really dive into the platypus uh

816
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:06,240
Speaker 1: and focus on it, because it is a true monster.

817
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:09,080
Speaker 1: Uh and and it's wonderful. But then we have I

818
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:13,400
Speaker 1: think four different species of a kidna to consider as well.

819
00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:16,560
Speaker 1: So monetreams are thought to have diverged from other mammals

820
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:19,640
Speaker 1: roughly a hundred and ninety million years ago. There's still

821
00:46:19,680 --> 00:46:21,880
Speaker 1: a lot we don't know about them in their connections

822
00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:24,760
Speaker 1: to other mammals, but but among their most notable features

823
00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:27,799
Speaker 1: is their egg laying. Oh and incidentally, uh, the name

824
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:32,120
Speaker 1: a kidna We get that from the Greek mythological figure

825
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:35,719
Speaker 1: a kidna, who is sometimes described as the mother of monsters,

826
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:39,320
Speaker 1: and who is often depicted as having like a half

827
00:46:39,320 --> 00:46:43,600
Speaker 1: snake half human body. Therefore, Shi embodies both mammalian and

828
00:46:43,680 --> 00:46:47,080
Speaker 1: serpentine aspects. I'm just trying to remember. Why did the

829
00:46:47,120 --> 00:46:50,279
Speaker 1: word a kidna make me think of vampires? Is the

830
00:46:51,239 --> 00:46:54,440
Speaker 1: they're like an a kidna vampire and the Witcher Games

831
00:46:54,560 --> 00:46:57,000
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. I don't know. I've never

832
00:46:57,040 --> 00:46:59,680
Speaker 1: played the Witcher Games, but I mean a kidnas a

833
00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:02,920
Speaker 1: one full name for a monstrous enemy. So I think

834
00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:04,960
Speaker 1: I'm brushing up against a sound alike here. But but

835
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:07,839
Speaker 1: a kidna in the mythological context is is cool enough

836
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:10,439
Speaker 1: on her own, right? And uh? And when we look

837
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:13,560
Speaker 1: to the organisms that we have dubbed a kidnas, they're

838
00:47:13,680 --> 00:47:17,880
Speaker 1: really fascinating as well. Less frightening and monstrous perhaps, but

839
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:22,279
Speaker 1: just weird and at times adorable. So I was reading

840
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:24,279
Speaker 1: a few different sources on this, one of which is

841
00:47:24,280 --> 00:47:26,959
Speaker 1: as an excellent little article from the New York Times

842
00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine titled Brainy A kidnap proves looks

843
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:34,320
Speaker 1: aren't everything, and the author, Natalie Angier, has this wonderful

844
00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:40,239
Speaker 1: little paragraph describing their reproduction quote. Reproductively, monotreams are like

845
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:45,000
Speaker 1: a VCR DVD unit, an embodiment of a technology. In transition,

846
00:47:45,480 --> 00:47:48,640
Speaker 1: they lay leathery eggs, as reptiles do, but then feed

847
00:47:48,719 --> 00:47:52,279
Speaker 1: the so called puggles that hatch with milk drizzled out

848
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:56,560
Speaker 1: of glands in the chest rather than expressed through nippled teats,

849
00:47:56,600 --> 00:47:59,919
Speaker 1: and sometimes so enriched with iron that it looks paint.

850
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:05,319
Speaker 1: WHOA man, I'm still reeling from that VCR DVD unit comparison.

851
00:48:06,200 --> 00:48:07,920
Speaker 1: It makes me think this should have been the subject

852
00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:10,440
Speaker 1: of a fast and furious movie, Like they're trying to

853
00:48:10,520 --> 00:48:14,879
Speaker 1: hijack a truck full of a kidna. They're they're they're

854
00:48:14,880 --> 00:48:17,160
Speaker 1: they're weird looking creative. For first of all, that that

855
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:20,920
Speaker 1: that iron and rich milk that's I'm assuming coming largely

856
00:48:20,960 --> 00:48:24,239
Speaker 1: from their diet of ants and termites, So they're voracious

857
00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:27,640
Speaker 1: ant and termite eaters. And yeah, they're just really look

858
00:48:27,719 --> 00:48:29,640
Speaker 1: up a picture of one, because they're they're really neat.

859
00:48:29,680 --> 00:48:34,239
Speaker 1: They have this this specialized snout clearly uh evolved to

860
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:38,200
Speaker 1: enable them to pursue their their main prey, and then

861
00:48:38,200 --> 00:48:43,799
Speaker 1: they have these just pudgy, spiny bodies. They're they're absolutely

862
00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:46,880
Speaker 1: weird and adorable looking. And if you look up images

863
00:48:47,040 --> 00:48:50,560
Speaker 1: of of of a of an a kidna puggle of

864
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:53,120
Speaker 1: a of a baby a kidna, uh, it is just

865
00:48:53,320 --> 00:48:56,640
Speaker 1: even weirder and more cuddly. They're like little um little

866
00:48:56,680 --> 00:49:00,960
Speaker 1: bean bags with with snouts. I believe the alts are spiny,

867
00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:03,719
Speaker 1: aren't they? Or the or the young also spiny? Know

868
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 1: that well is we'll discuss the the young are born

869
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:10,919
Speaker 1: or rather hatch without spines and then developed them later.

870
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:15,239
Speaker 1: But yeah, the adults definitely have spines for their protection. Now,

871
00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:17,880
Speaker 1: to come back to the pink milk it looks I

872
00:49:17,880 --> 00:49:20,480
Speaker 1: was looking at a two thousand and eight Harvard University

873
00:49:20,520 --> 00:49:24,240
Speaker 1: study that the claims that the achidna might have simply

874
00:49:24,280 --> 00:49:27,760
Speaker 1: evolved away from suckling due the due to the demands

875
00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:31,000
Speaker 1: of its specialized mouth parts and its specialized diet. So

876
00:49:31,440 --> 00:49:34,839
Speaker 1: not necessarily a case here where the achidna is like, um,

877
00:49:35,080 --> 00:49:38,719
Speaker 1: you know, you know, predates suckling, but rather might have

878
00:49:38,760 --> 00:49:42,080
Speaker 1: evolved away from suckling as a means of carrying out

879
00:49:42,080 --> 00:49:45,680
Speaker 1: its diet. Yeah, maybe a mouth made for devouring ants

880
00:49:45,800 --> 00:49:49,759
Speaker 1: is not ideal for this way of getting milk. Yeah, exactly,

881
00:49:49,920 --> 00:49:52,759
Speaker 1: more for lapping. So so let's talk about the eggs

882
00:49:52,760 --> 00:49:54,720
Speaker 1: a little bit. So the eggs of an a kidna,

883
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:58,000
Speaker 1: I want to be clear, are not furry. Um. The

884
00:49:58,080 --> 00:50:00,959
Speaker 1: achidna is of course covered with with spines, but also

885
00:50:01,080 --> 00:50:03,759
Speaker 1: coarse hair, so this is still not a case of

886
00:50:03,760 --> 00:50:07,120
Speaker 1: a furry egg. The egg is leathery and twenty two

887
00:50:07,239 --> 00:50:11,520
Speaker 1: days after conception, it is deposited directly into the female's pouch,

888
00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:15,040
Speaker 1: and after ten days of gestation in the pouch, the

889
00:50:15,080 --> 00:50:19,920
Speaker 1: puggle bust through uh that leathery shell with a reptile

890
00:50:20,040 --> 00:50:22,680
Speaker 1: like egg tooth, and then remains in the pouch for

891
00:50:22,719 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 1: another forty five to fifty five days, continuing to develop

892
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:30,600
Speaker 1: in major ways, such as growing out those defensive spines.

893
00:50:31,560 --> 00:50:34,080
Speaker 1: And if you, I am highly encourage everyone to look

894
00:50:34,160 --> 00:50:36,640
Speaker 1: up video footage of this. I found a great a

895
00:50:36,719 --> 00:50:40,200
Speaker 1: kidnaped hatching video that's easily found on YouTube from I

896
00:50:40,280 --> 00:50:42,719
Speaker 1: want to say it's from the seventies or maybe the fifties.

897
00:50:42,800 --> 00:50:45,360
Speaker 1: I can't can't recall. It's it's older footage, but you

898
00:50:45,400 --> 00:50:47,480
Speaker 1: get to see one of these little puggles and it's

899
00:50:47,560 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 1: pointed out that the puggle is so uh, you know, immature,

900
00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:55,920
Speaker 1: so translucent, so helpless that after it has stuffed itself

901
00:50:55,960 --> 00:50:59,120
Speaker 1: with milk, you can see the milk inside of it

902
00:50:59,360 --> 00:51:02,480
Speaker 1: through its in slucent pink body. Whoa, that makes me

903
00:51:02,520 --> 00:51:05,080
Speaker 1: think of the honey pot ants or you can. Yeah, yeah,

904
00:51:05,120 --> 00:51:07,920
Speaker 1: it does look a lot like that, you know. It's

905
00:51:07,960 --> 00:51:11,239
Speaker 1: it's just so immature and helpless at that point. It's

906
00:51:11,360 --> 00:51:13,839
Speaker 1: uh uh, it's I was thinking it's kind of like

907
00:51:14,040 --> 00:51:17,960
Speaker 1: a translucent gush or candy, you know, with a kid

908
00:51:17,960 --> 00:51:19,760
Speaker 1: in the milk in the middle. Wait, didn't we also

909
00:51:19,840 --> 00:51:22,520
Speaker 1: compare the honey pot ants to gushers? I guess we did.

910
00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:25,239
Speaker 1: We just we just got gushers on the brain here.

911
00:51:25,480 --> 00:51:27,800
Speaker 1: I don't even know if they still make gushers, but god,

912
00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:30,880
Speaker 1: that is the most malevolent candy of all time. I

913
00:51:30,920 --> 00:51:32,759
Speaker 1: don't know, now that I'm thinking about it. What do

914
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:35,680
Speaker 1: you think gushers? Um? You know, they they have that

915
00:51:35,760 --> 00:51:39,239
Speaker 1: kind of popping liquid filled Maybe they're supposed to be

916
00:51:39,280 --> 00:51:42,840
Speaker 1: like eggs, you know. Children want to gobble up the

917
00:51:42,840 --> 00:51:47,560
Speaker 1: eggs of some strange, purplely fruit scented creature, and that's

918
00:51:47,560 --> 00:51:49,360
Speaker 1: what gushers are for. I don't want to know what

919
00:51:49,440 --> 00:51:52,759
Speaker 1: happens if you microwave a gusher. No, I'm sure it's

920
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:55,200
Speaker 1: been done to certainly, do not try it on our

921
00:51:55,239 --> 00:51:59,200
Speaker 1: account though, if even hasn't been done, don't ever microwave

922
00:51:59,280 --> 00:52:02,560
Speaker 1: anything as you heard us talking about something that blanket statement.

923
00:52:02,640 --> 00:52:07,440
Speaker 1: All all liability erased. Yes, follow the instructions for heating

924
00:52:07,440 --> 00:52:10,680
Speaker 1: anything in the microwave. Okay, So back to mono trains.

925
00:52:10,680 --> 00:52:13,480
Speaker 1: So there were once hundreds of mono train species, and

926
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:16,640
Speaker 1: the largest that we know of was one that is

927
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:20,560
Speaker 1: known as Zaglosis Haketti. And it would have been about

928
00:52:20,560 --> 00:52:23,160
Speaker 1: a meter long and a wait, about thirty kilogram, so

929
00:52:23,160 --> 00:52:27,799
Speaker 1: about three point two ft long and weighing sixty six pounds. Um.

930
00:52:28,320 --> 00:52:32,040
Speaker 1: I've seen some images here. I included one in our document, Joe,

931
00:52:32,239 --> 00:52:33,839
Speaker 1: we can see about how big this would have been.

932
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:35,959
Speaker 1: It would have been like, I don't know, what would

933
00:52:35,960 --> 00:52:39,120
Speaker 1: you say, like a like a very large plump dog. Yeah,

934
00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:42,560
Speaker 1: that sounds about right, a spiny bulldog. Again, not a

935
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:45,560
Speaker 1: furry egg, but in a way close to a furry egg.

936
00:52:46,080 --> 00:52:49,760
Speaker 1: But but I will add that there is perhaps another

937
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:54,320
Speaker 1: possibility for fury egg hunting in nature. A certain moths

938
00:52:54,480 --> 00:52:58,200
Speaker 1: are often described as being furry Granted, we're dealing with

939
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:00,920
Speaker 1: something different than what you wouldn't honor on your pet

940
00:53:00,920 --> 00:53:04,759
Speaker 1: dog or your pet cat. But these moths, such as

941
00:53:04,800 --> 00:53:07,400
Speaker 1: the gypsy moth, will actually cover their eggs with a

942
00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:12,160
Speaker 1: coating that contains that quote unquote fur, So you know

943
00:53:12,239 --> 00:53:14,279
Speaker 1: that might be one way to tackle the problem. I

944
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:17,000
Speaker 1: suppose the idea of an egg naturally being insulated with

945
00:53:17,040 --> 00:53:20,279
Speaker 1: a layer of hair isn't completely crazy, but I don't

946
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:22,959
Speaker 1: think we see it, and and most examples we see

947
00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:26,800
Speaker 1: entail a stronger alliance on the parent's body or efforts

948
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:28,880
Speaker 1: by the parent to secret the egg away in a

949
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:33,680
Speaker 1: warm place. All right, And for our final egg exploration

950
00:53:33,800 --> 00:53:37,960
Speaker 1: or exploration, uh, here today, I thought we might consider

951
00:53:38,480 --> 00:53:41,560
Speaker 1: the idea of the God in his egg. Okay, let's

952
00:53:41,560 --> 00:53:44,319
Speaker 1: do it. So we've we've mentioned this entity on the

953
00:53:44,320 --> 00:53:48,200
Speaker 1: show before, uh, and Joe, you might even remember it, uh.

954
00:53:48,400 --> 00:53:49,840
Speaker 1: I think I think we came up in one of

955
00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:53,120
Speaker 1: our episodes. The Egyptian Book of the Dead speaks of

956
00:53:53,360 --> 00:53:55,920
Speaker 1: and this is of course a translation quote that August

957
00:53:56,040 --> 00:53:59,520
Speaker 1: God who is in his egg, a terrifying entity said

958
00:53:59,520 --> 00:54:03,160
Speaker 1: to rule over the realm of of exc within the

959
00:54:03,239 --> 00:54:06,600
Speaker 1: Egyptian underworld. It's a It's described as a yellow realm

960
00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:09,239
Speaker 1: that is hidden from the gods and subject to the

961
00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:13,279
Speaker 1: powers of the eye that captures, and so there's an

962
00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:18,560
Speaker 1: invocation for the traveler into the afterlife. They would say,

963
00:54:18,800 --> 00:54:21,760
Speaker 1: hail to you, you August, God, who are in your egg.

964
00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:24,240
Speaker 1: I have come to you to be in your sweets,

965
00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:26,839
Speaker 1: so that I may go in and out of xy,

966
00:54:26,880 --> 00:54:28,880
Speaker 1: that its doors may be open to me, that I

967
00:54:28,920 --> 00:54:31,000
Speaker 1: may breathe the air in it, and that I may

968
00:54:31,080 --> 00:54:34,759
Speaker 1: have power through its offerings. Okay, so you gotta prostrate

969
00:54:34,800 --> 00:54:38,960
Speaker 1: yourself before the egg. Yeah, yeah, this weird. And something

970
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:41,000
Speaker 1: about this idea. It's again it comes back to this

971
00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:44,880
Speaker 1: paradox of that is often inherent in the egg. You know,

972
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:47,280
Speaker 1: what is the egg, things that emerge out of the egg.

973
00:54:47,400 --> 00:54:51,360
Speaker 1: But here especially the paradox of a thing that is

974
00:54:52,360 --> 00:54:54,920
Speaker 1: post egg and pre egg at once, the thing that

975
00:54:55,040 --> 00:54:58,840
Speaker 1: never emerged from its egg, and yet is a complete

976
00:54:58,880 --> 00:55:01,319
Speaker 1: being in some form, like it is a god, but

977
00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:05,160
Speaker 1: it has not hatched, and it somehow has the powers

978
00:55:05,200 --> 00:55:07,880
Speaker 1: of an entity that is um you know that that

979
00:55:08,040 --> 00:55:11,359
Speaker 1: is that is you know, fully powerful. Yeah, I mean

980
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:16,879
Speaker 1: the egg is in many ways the archetype of potential. Yeah,

981
00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:20,640
Speaker 1: so again the August got in his egg. Terrifying, weird,

982
00:55:21,320 --> 00:55:25,400
Speaker 1: almost impossible to behold. But it also does bring to mind.

983
00:55:25,680 --> 00:55:28,719
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember this character, but there's

984
00:55:28,719 --> 00:55:33,000
Speaker 1: a character named Sheldon who was featured on in Jim

985
00:55:33,120 --> 00:55:37,319
Speaker 1: Davis's US Acres cartoon and this showed up on Garfield

986
00:55:37,320 --> 00:55:39,800
Speaker 1: and Friends. Rachel and I were just talking about us

987
00:55:39,880 --> 00:55:42,400
Speaker 1: Acres the other day. I don't remember why it came up,

988
00:55:42,440 --> 00:55:45,200
Speaker 1: but we we both remember having this feeling where you'd

989
00:55:45,200 --> 00:55:47,520
Speaker 1: be watching Garfield and then it would go to this

990
00:55:47,640 --> 00:55:51,839
Speaker 1: other thing, this farm thing, and I remember having this

991
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 1: feeling like when is this going to start making sense?

992
00:55:56,120 --> 00:55:58,799
Speaker 1: And I don't think it ever did. Yeah, you would.

993
00:55:58,800 --> 00:56:00,839
Speaker 1: You would get Garfield and knew it, then you would

994
00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:02,799
Speaker 1: get us Acres, and then you would get a little

995
00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:05,160
Speaker 1: more Garfield. It was what I like that. I think

996
00:56:05,160 --> 00:56:08,279
Speaker 1: they call it like an ad a format um. But

997
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:11,200
Speaker 1: but US Acres had a whole host of characters, you know,

998
00:56:11,239 --> 00:56:13,879
Speaker 1: your typical farm characters, but one of them, the one

999
00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:16,800
Speaker 1: that really made it memorable, was that you had Sheldon,

1000
00:56:17,200 --> 00:56:20,160
Speaker 1: who was a chicken that was still in its egg.

1001
00:56:20,440 --> 00:56:22,759
Speaker 1: It's just an egg, like a walking egg, an egg

1002
00:56:22,800 --> 00:56:26,600
Speaker 1: with two chicken legs emerging from it. And there are

1003
00:56:26,640 --> 00:56:29,480
Speaker 1: other takes on this out there. There's a wonderful children's

1004
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:32,840
Speaker 1: book by many Gray titled Egg Drop, and it features

1005
00:56:32,880 --> 00:56:35,840
Speaker 1: an egg that wants to fly, and I don't recall

1006
00:56:35,960 --> 00:56:38,640
Speaker 1: it actually has legs, but it certainly has like a

1007
00:56:38,680 --> 00:56:40,760
Speaker 1: will of its own, and it wants to do things,

1008
00:56:40,800 --> 00:56:43,400
Speaker 1: and it thinks it can do things that a a

1009
00:56:43,520 --> 00:56:47,000
Speaker 1: hatched chicken, a fully developed chicken should be capable of.

1010
00:56:47,200 --> 00:56:50,120
Speaker 1: That's a funny symbol. I mean it. Uh, we all

1011
00:56:50,160 --> 00:56:52,880
Speaker 1: have the experience in childhood of wanting to do the

1012
00:56:52,960 --> 00:56:55,960
Speaker 1: things that adults do, not understanding why I can't do

1013
00:56:56,040 --> 00:56:58,680
Speaker 1: that yet, And then a lot of cases the reason

1014
00:56:58,960 --> 00:57:02,480
Speaker 1: is intellectual and emotional maturity. You don't have that level

1015
00:57:02,520 --> 00:57:05,840
Speaker 1: of like brain responsibility yet to be an adult. But

1016
00:57:05,880 --> 00:57:08,080
Speaker 1: the egg is a different thing, right because it doesn't

1017
00:57:08,160 --> 00:57:13,160
Speaker 1: have limbs and it can't move around on its own. Yeah, exactly,

1018
00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:14,920
Speaker 1: And that's that's roughly kind of the idea that that

1019
00:57:15,000 --> 00:57:18,320
Speaker 1: many Gray explores in this this excellent book, which also,

1020
00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:21,720
Speaker 1: by the way, has some principles of aerodynamics involved in it,

1021
00:57:21,800 --> 00:57:23,840
Speaker 1: so I wouldn't say that it's the science book, but

1022
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:25,640
Speaker 1: it has a little science sprinkled in it, and it

1023
00:57:25,640 --> 00:57:29,640
Speaker 1: has wonderful illustrations. Now the for for our purposes. Though,

1024
00:57:29,640 --> 00:57:32,600
Speaker 1: in the natural world, the prospect of an animal simply

1025
00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:38,200
Speaker 1: never leaving its egg is certainly fascinating. It's it's paradoxical

1026
00:57:38,280 --> 00:57:41,080
Speaker 1: to a magical degree. It's kind of like the aura

1027
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:44,560
Speaker 1: bora serpent consuming its own tail. Right. But while we

1028
00:57:44,640 --> 00:57:47,400
Speaker 1: don't see examples in the in the natural world where

1029
00:57:47,480 --> 00:57:50,640
Speaker 1: an egg lasts forever like the egg is the final form,

1030
00:57:50,680 --> 00:57:53,720
Speaker 1: we do see examples where the egg phase lasts for

1031
00:57:53,800 --> 00:57:56,640
Speaker 1: a pretty long time. Oh yeah, I guess I've never

1032
00:57:57,040 --> 00:58:00,200
Speaker 1: asked this specific question before. What what is the longest

1033
00:58:00,320 --> 00:58:03,920
Speaker 1: egg incubation period in in nature? Yeah, Like, just to

1034
00:58:03,960 --> 00:58:06,760
Speaker 1: come back to Alien, right, there's that The open question

1035
00:58:06,880 --> 00:58:08,840
Speaker 1: in that movie is like how long have these eggs

1036
00:58:08,840 --> 00:58:11,720
Speaker 1: been here? You know, sort of applies like thousands of

1037
00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:15,080
Speaker 1: years or something. Yeah, long enough for for the for

1038
00:58:15,120 --> 00:58:18,560
Speaker 1: the engineer up there on the the seat thing to

1039
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:22,680
Speaker 1: to rot and become a mummy. But but yeah, when

1040
00:58:22,680 --> 00:58:24,760
Speaker 1: we look to the natural world, where there's some pretty

1041
00:58:24,800 --> 00:58:30,640
Speaker 1: startling um examples. Probably the most startling that I ran

1042
00:58:30,680 --> 00:58:37,120
Speaker 1: across is the deep sea octopus Greanella dawn Boro pacifica.

1043
00:58:37,360 --> 00:58:40,000
Speaker 1: And it has been observed to brood its eggs for

1044
00:58:40,040 --> 00:58:45,040
Speaker 1: four point five years or fifty three months wow. And

1045
00:58:45,120 --> 00:58:47,480
Speaker 1: to put that in a in a proper frame of reference,

1046
00:58:47,520 --> 00:58:50,360
Speaker 1: that's compared to the typical one to three month brooding

1047
00:58:50,360 --> 00:58:55,200
Speaker 1: time for shallower water octopus species. That's unbelievable. I mean,

1048
00:58:55,240 --> 00:58:59,000
Speaker 1: so an egg can't defend itself. So that would mean

1049
00:58:59,160 --> 00:59:01,840
Speaker 1: an egg has to either just survive on its own

1050
00:59:01,960 --> 00:59:06,280
Speaker 1: or be protected for for four and a half years

1051
00:59:06,320 --> 00:59:09,040
Speaker 1: before it can hatch and at least have like escape

1052
00:59:09,120 --> 00:59:12,760
Speaker 1: behaviors exactly. And and that's exactly, and what we see

1053
00:59:12,800 --> 00:59:16,360
Speaker 1: with the octopus is a mother caring for the eggs,

1054
00:59:16,400 --> 00:59:18,600
Speaker 1: looking after the eggs. And and of course one of

1055
00:59:18,640 --> 00:59:20,920
Speaker 1: the curious wrinkles here is that typically the mother does

1056
00:59:20,960 --> 00:59:24,280
Speaker 1: not eat during this period, like she has she has

1057
00:59:24,360 --> 00:59:27,360
Speaker 1: deposited the eggs and now her only purpose in life

1058
00:59:27,760 --> 00:59:31,120
Speaker 1: is to protect them and to ultimately die protecting them.

1059
00:59:31,160 --> 00:59:33,720
Speaker 1: Like she's not gonna she's not going to eat, They're

1060
00:59:33,760 --> 00:59:35,840
Speaker 1: going to hatch, and then when they're gone, she's going

1061
00:59:35,920 --> 00:59:39,480
Speaker 1: to die. So with the deep sea octopus, this four

1062
00:59:39,520 --> 00:59:42,280
Speaker 1: point five year brooding period in which she looks after them.

1063
00:59:42,320 --> 00:59:45,680
Speaker 1: This is apparently the longest brooding period of any known animal.

1064
00:59:46,000 --> 00:59:48,520
Speaker 1: I was reading about this in a study by Robinson

1065
00:59:48,560 --> 00:59:51,760
Speaker 1: at All published in p. Los One in two thousand fourteen,

1066
00:59:52,480 --> 00:59:54,800
Speaker 1: and uh and they go into greater detail on this.

1067
00:59:54,920 --> 00:59:57,480
Speaker 1: You can find the whole study online. But the two

1068
00:59:57,560 --> 01:00:01,400
Speaker 1: key factors they say here are low to amperature because

1069
01:00:01,440 --> 01:00:03,840
Speaker 1: of course it's the deep sea, and and this would

1070
01:00:03,960 --> 01:00:06,840
Speaker 1: means slower metabolism. We see other examples of this in

1071
01:00:06,920 --> 01:00:10,360
Speaker 1: other organisms in terms of just you know, slow metabolism

1072
01:00:10,600 --> 01:00:13,880
Speaker 1: and and low temperature. But then also key here is

1073
01:00:14,280 --> 01:00:19,280
Speaker 1: the selective advantage of producing highly developed hatch links. So

1074
01:00:20,040 --> 01:00:22,120
Speaker 1: it comes back to the idea that once they're they're

1075
01:00:22,160 --> 01:00:25,520
Speaker 1: they hatch, they're ready to go. They're well cooked, ready

1076
01:00:25,560 --> 01:00:29,000
Speaker 1: to move. The clutch size of the deep sea octopus

1077
01:00:29,200 --> 01:00:33,720
Speaker 1: is is quite small compared to other octopus species. So

1078
01:00:33,760 --> 01:00:37,240
Speaker 1: there's ultimately this focus on quality over quantity, instead of

1079
01:00:37,240 --> 01:00:39,160
Speaker 1: it being a situation where like let's get some baby

1080
01:00:39,440 --> 01:00:42,280
Speaker 1: octopi out there, a lot of them are gonna get eaten,

1081
01:00:42,280 --> 01:00:44,080
Speaker 1: but some of them will slip by. Now this is

1082
01:00:44,120 --> 01:00:47,480
Speaker 1: instead let's focus on a smaller bunch of of of

1083
01:00:47,520 --> 01:00:51,280
Speaker 1: octopus young. Uh, that all have a very strong fighting chance.

1084
01:00:51,600 --> 01:00:54,200
Speaker 1: And while this might be a familiar tactic too, you

1085
01:00:54,200 --> 01:00:57,720
Speaker 1: know people thinking about mammals and birds and stuff, this

1086
01:00:57,840 --> 01:01:00,520
Speaker 1: is the less common choice for organ is ms that

1087
01:01:00,560 --> 01:01:03,240
Speaker 1: live in the ocean, right, I mean marine organisms are

1088
01:01:03,320 --> 01:01:06,120
Speaker 1: very often just sort of spamming with eggs. I mean

1089
01:01:06,560 --> 01:01:10,640
Speaker 1: like there there's tons of production of offspring with very

1090
01:01:10,720 --> 01:01:15,000
Speaker 1: little investment in each individual one. Yeah, it's usually um,

1091
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:17,600
Speaker 1: you know, generally when we're talking about the about the

1092
01:01:17,640 --> 01:01:19,560
Speaker 1: cases that buck the trend, were of course dealing with

1093
01:01:19,600 --> 01:01:22,640
Speaker 1: something like like a whale, uh, you know, annalion species

1094
01:01:22,640 --> 01:01:25,400
Speaker 1: that return to the water, or we're dealing with you know,

1095
01:01:25,480 --> 01:01:28,920
Speaker 1: really interesting examples from the shark world. But this is

1096
01:01:28,960 --> 01:01:32,600
Speaker 1: the octopus. So the reach of searchers stress though that

1097
01:01:33,160 --> 01:01:36,120
Speaker 1: this is a pretty abundant deep sea species. So it's

1098
01:01:36,120 --> 01:01:39,200
Speaker 1: not like we've necessarily found a true rarity in the

1099
01:01:39,280 --> 01:01:42,640
Speaker 1: natural order of things. It just seems like a rarity

1100
01:01:42,680 --> 01:01:47,040
Speaker 1: because we don't understand deep sea ecology well enough. Interesting

1101
01:01:47,440 --> 01:01:49,439
Speaker 1: and and the other side of it that they point

1102
01:01:49,440 --> 01:01:53,760
Speaker 1: out is again octopus mothers generally don't eat during their brooding,

1103
01:01:53,920 --> 01:01:57,520
Speaker 1: so it's it would seem to be the case that

1104
01:01:57,640 --> 01:02:00,640
Speaker 1: this mother does not eat for four point five years.

1105
01:02:01,240 --> 01:02:04,680
Speaker 1: Um and uh. And this is not completely understood, but

1106
01:02:04,760 --> 01:02:06,400
Speaker 1: basically it seems like it's going to come back to

1107
01:02:06,440 --> 01:02:09,520
Speaker 1: the slower metabolism of deep sea creatures. Yeah, so what

1108
01:02:09,680 --> 01:02:11,920
Speaker 1: you load up on a bunch of body fat or

1109
01:02:12,240 --> 01:02:16,560
Speaker 1: stored energy before this brooding period and then in the

1110
01:02:16,640 --> 01:02:20,480
Speaker 1: extreme cold and dark, I would imagine it's probably not

1111
01:02:20,560 --> 01:02:23,120
Speaker 1: moving a whole lot during this period. You just sort

1112
01:02:23,160 --> 01:02:26,760
Speaker 1: of like take your metabolism way way down so you

1113
01:02:26,760 --> 01:02:29,600
Speaker 1: can stay in it for the long haul without continuous

1114
01:02:29,640 --> 01:02:34,080
Speaker 1: reinvestments of chemical energy. Yeah. Absolutely, So it's not quite

1115
01:02:34,120 --> 01:02:37,040
Speaker 1: the God in his egg, but it is interesting to

1116
01:02:37,040 --> 01:02:39,400
Speaker 1: see like an example of like what remains an egg

1117
01:02:39,680 --> 01:02:43,480
Speaker 1: the longest under natural conditions on our planet. I did

1118
01:02:43,480 --> 01:02:47,360
Speaker 1: not know about this octopus and this is absolutely majestic. Yeah.

1119
01:02:47,440 --> 01:02:49,560
Speaker 1: I mean the octopus world, as we see time and

1120
01:02:49,560 --> 01:02:52,200
Speaker 1: time again on the show, is just full of wonders,

1121
01:02:52,600 --> 01:02:55,160
Speaker 1: and there's still so much we have to learn about them. Yeah,

1122
01:02:55,160 --> 01:02:58,960
Speaker 1: i'd imagine, especially with these really deep ones. Yeah, all right,

1123
01:02:59,000 --> 01:03:01,600
Speaker 1: well we're gonna go ahead it and uh seal the

1124
01:03:01,640 --> 01:03:05,280
Speaker 1: egg chamber shut for this episode. But like I said,

1125
01:03:05,320 --> 01:03:07,120
Speaker 1: there are a lot of eggs out there in the

1126
01:03:07,200 --> 01:03:11,600
Speaker 1: natural world, a lot of unique um egg forms, a

1127
01:03:11,640 --> 01:03:15,320
Speaker 1: lot of unique egg laying strategies. We would love to

1128
01:03:15,360 --> 01:03:18,400
Speaker 1: come back and explore more of these. You have everyone

1129
01:03:18,400 --> 01:03:20,520
Speaker 1: out there is interested. If you're interested, let us know.

1130
01:03:20,600 --> 01:03:26,040
Speaker 1: If you have your own experiences with eggs of varying species, uh,

1131
01:03:26,200 --> 01:03:28,760
Speaker 1: feel free to write in and tell us about it.

1132
01:03:28,880 --> 01:03:31,320
Speaker 1: Or likewise, if there's just a really cool example of

1133
01:03:31,360 --> 01:03:33,800
Speaker 1: eggs in the natural world or something from science fiction

1134
01:03:34,040 --> 01:03:35,840
Speaker 1: that you think we should know about that we could

1135
01:03:35,840 --> 01:03:38,680
Speaker 1: really pick up and run with, then let us know

1136
01:03:38,720 --> 01:03:41,160
Speaker 1: about that as well. In the meantime, if you want

1137
01:03:41,160 --> 01:03:43,040
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

1138
01:03:43,040 --> 01:03:45,080
Speaker 1: you can find us wherever you get your podcast and

1139
01:03:45,160 --> 01:03:48,120
Speaker 1: wherever that happens to be. Just make sure you rate, review,

1140
01:03:48,160 --> 01:03:51,720
Speaker 1: and subscribe. Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio

1141
01:03:51,800 --> 01:03:54,640
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get

1142
01:03:54,680 --> 01:03:56,880
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or

1143
01:03:56,880 --> 01:03:59,400
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, to

1144
01:03:59,480 --> 01:04:02,160
Speaker 1: tell us your stories about eggs, or just to say hello,

1145
01:04:02,280 --> 01:04:05,000
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1146
01:04:05,040 --> 01:04:15,160
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

1147
01:04:15,200 --> 01:04:17,920
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my

1148
01:04:17,960 --> 01:04:21,000
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or

1149
01:04:21,040 --> 01:04:31,440
Speaker 1: wherever you listening to your favorite shows.